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Usually at the helipad I see them stumble-dance across the hot asphalt with crokersacks over their heads, moving toward the interrogation huts, thin-framed as box kites of sticks & black silk anticipating a hard wind that'll tug & snatch them out into space. I think some must be laughing under their dust-colored hoods, knowing rockets are aimed at Chu Lai--that the water's evaporating & soon the nail will make contact with metal. How can anyone anywhere love these half-broken figures bent under the sky's brightness? The weight they carry is the soil we tread night & day. Who can cry for them? I've heard the old ones are the hardest to break. An arm twist, a combat boot against the skull, a .45 jabbed into the mouth, nothing works. When they start talking with ancestors faint as camphor smoke in pagodas, you know you'll have to kill them to get an answer. Sunlight throws scythes against the afternoon. Everything's a heat mirage; a river tugs at their slow feet. I stand alone & amazed, with a pill-happy door gunner signaling for me to board the Cobra. I remember how one day I almost bowed to such figures walking toward me, under a corporal's ironclad stare. I can't say why. From a half-mile away trees huddle together, & the prisoners look like marionettes hooked to strings of light.

Usually at the helipad I see them stumble-danceacross the hot asphalt withcrokersacks over their heads, moving toward the interrogation huts, thin-framed as box kites of sticks & black silk anticipating a hard wind that'll tug & snatch them out into space. I think some must be laughing under their dust-colored hoods, knowing rockets are aimed at Chu Lai--that the water's evaporating & soon the nail will make contact with metal.How can anyone anywhere love these half-broken figures bent under the sky's brightness? The weight they carry is the soil we tread night & day. Who can cry for them? I've heard the old ones are the hardest to break. An arm twist, a combat boot against the skull, a .45 jabbed into the mouth, nothing works. When they start talking with ancestors faint as camphor smoke in pagodas, you know you'll have to kill them to get an answer. Sunlight throws scythes against the afternoon. Everything's a heat mirage; a river tugs at their slow feet. I stand alone & amazed, with a pill-happy door gunner signaling for me to board the Cobra. I remember how one day I almost bowed to such figures walking toward me, under a corporal's ironclad stare. I can't say why. From a half-mile away trees huddle together, & the prisoners look like marionettes hooked to strings of light

Music divides the evening. I close my eyes & can see men drawing lines in the dust. America pushes through the membrane of mist & smoke, & I'm a small boy again in Bogalusa. WhiteOnlysigns & Hank Snow. But tonight I walk into a place where bar girls fade like tropical birds. When I order a beer, the mama-san behind the counter acts as if she can't understand, while her eyes skirt each white face, as Hank Williams calls from the psychedelic jukebox. We have played Judas where only machine-gun fire brings us together. Down the street black GIshold to their turf also. An off-limits sign pulls me deeper into alleys, as I look for a softness behind these voices wounded by their beauty & war.Back in the bush at Dak To & KheSanh, we foughtthe brothers of these women we now run to hold in our arms. There's more than a nation inside us, as black&whitesoldiers touch the same lovers minutes apart, tasting each other's breath, without knowing these rooms run into each other like tunnels leading to the underworld.

One critic described Yusef’s writing as “a freshness marked by a delightful figurativeness and a wit that never cloys and which may be attributed in great part to the richness of the material from which it springs.”

“How to provide shape and equilibrium, in the absence of traditional form, is the great challenge for contemporary poetry. The binding power that Komunyakaa finds in jazz is what all free-verse poets should seek.”

My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't, dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way--the stone lets me go. I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters likesmoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirrora woman's trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair.